


fists and flesh

by orsumfenix



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Character, Spoilers, repressed sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:34:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orsumfenix/pseuds/orsumfenix
Summary: Sometimes the realisation that you're a lesbian takes a long time. Sometimes it takes years of repression and then stabbing your mother.





	fists and flesh

**Author's Note:**

> im gay for rachel duncan therefore im making rachel duncan gay, sorry lads thats just how this thing works  
> warning for mentions of sex and sexual fantasies but it's very brief and nothing is explicit

Cosima Neihaus starts dating a girl at the age of fourteen. Rachel stares at the picture of their interlocked fingers and resists the urge to trail her own across it.

Some of the others have had boyfriends, but this feels…different, somehow. The vague detachment she’s always felt isn’t there anymore. Instead there’s a strange feeling in her chest. One that feels a lot like knives.

Rachel doesn’t know what she’s feeling, so she concludes that it’s jealousy. She’s envious of the tenderness of their expressions, of the way they feel about each other. It might not be love _yet_ , but it’s more than she’s felt for anyone in years.

Sometimes at nights she lets go enough to fantasize. She could show up in San Francisco pretending to be Cosima and go on a date with her girlfriend – as a part of the experiment, of course. She could tell Dr Leekie she’d be conducting a first-hand study of Cosima Neihaus’ life. Maybe he’d even let her.

(Of course, she knows that he wouldn’t.)

The girl is Cosima’s first kiss. The girl is Cosima’s first _everything_ , and Rachel watches from a safe distance, from files and pictures and monitor reports.

“She’s different,” she tells Aldous. “I want to understand why.”

Aldous shrugs.

“It’s certainly interesting, I’ll give you that. None of the others have shown signs of an interest in women.” He looks at her, a not-quite smile hovering around his lips. “What about you, Rachel? Have you felt that way about someone?”

Rachel forces a smile. “No,” she says. “No one.”

\--

Two weeks later she suggests arranging for the girlfriend to move away, to test Cosima’s reaction. She reads the reports of Cosima’s crying with a smile on her lips.

\--

She hates the other girls at boarding school. Not because they’re cruel to her – quite the opposite, in fact. They’re simply beneath her, that’s all. They sit there chattering about boys and nails and netball and it’s not _big_ enough. Not with the future she has planned.

There are a few male teachers at the school, and some of the girls giggle when the younger ones are nearby. They whisper that they’re good-looking, that their personalities are attractive. Rachel sees nothing special about them. They’re bland. Average. They’re not deserving of the hype.

She feels the same way about the celebrities most other girls swoon over. It’s just one more thing to divide her from them.

When she gets the call informing her she’ll soon be returning to Dyad, it’s almost a relief.

\--

Rachel tells herself that she sees Marion as a mother figure, which is why she always tries to impress her. When she knows they’ll be meeting she puts on her neatest outfits and her red lipstick and looks in the mirror before she goes, making sure her eyebrows are perfectly arched.

Marion complements her outfit and inside Rachel’s chest something feels warm and fuzzy. Pride, probably. She’s pleased that a woman she admires approves of her.

Aldous asks if she sees Marion as a maternal figure. Rachel denies it. No one can replace _her_ mother, she tells him. He nods as though in approval, but she can tell that inside he just thinks she’s broken. Damaged goods.

He’s an idiot. One day she’ll reach a position above him, and he’ll be forced to admit that being ruthless is what gets through life.  

\--

When they're all seventeen, Janika Zingler falls in love with a woman. Cosima is no longer an outlier.

This time Rachel doesn't let herself fantasize. Wanting to be like them is undignified. It's beneath her. Then should all want to be like her, instead of then other way around.

(Sometimes she fantasizes about fantasizing, though. About lying in bed and allowing herself to wonder what it's like to be Miriam Johnson, or Alison Hendrix, or Danielle Fournier.

She knows if she  _did_ fantasize her thoughts would stray the most to Cosima and Janika. Maybe, by stopping herself from thinking about being  _any_ of them, she won't have to face that.)

\--

Rachel loses her virginity to a boy. Afterwards he wants to cuddle, but she tells him she’s going to the bathroom, packs her things, and leaves.

She didn’t do it because she liked him. She just wanted to know what it was like, as a learning experience.

She learns a lot of things, over the years. That men are easy to manipulate when you smile through your lipstick, that Ferdinand Chevalier is desperate enough to murder six girls just to impress her. Rachel wonders, sometimes, if she loves him. If the enjoyment she gets from manipulating him and knowing he’ll do whatever she says is what everyone else talks about when they say they’re in love.

(And that’s the problem, isn’t it? No one ever tells you what attraction is supposed to feel like.)

The men in her fantasies have blurred faces. They’re never defined and they never _do_ much. They’re just – there.

One night she tries imaging a woman instead. It feels wild and warm and how fantasies are probably _supposed_ to feel, and Rachel never tries again.

\--

Sarah Manning feels like a personal offence. Sarah Manning _is_ a personal offence, and it’s not long before their hatred is tangled-up and full of knives and Rachel tries to imagine being in this kind of conflict with a man and – can’t.

It’s because Sarah’s just _that_ annoying, she decides. Surely everyone must find Sarah this intense? This – enticing?

She hates Cosima, too. Less than Sarah, but it’s still there, nestled nicely in her chest.

 _How are you so open?_ she wants to scream some days, when Cosima is smiling up at Delphine and Delphine is smiling back. _How have you been so **certain** , for so long? Why do you get to understand yourself while I’m left scrabbling at the reactions my body gives me to work with?_

_It’s not fair._

Cosima has never been able to look at her own file. Rachel has. Logically, she should know more about herself. She should be more _aware_. But Cosima’s been dating girls since the age of fourteen and she probably knew for longer and Rachel still doesn’t know.

Rachel thinks she’s starting to know but doesn’t _want_ to know, and when she lets herself consider what she’s never let herself before, all she can feel in her heart is anxiousness.

(Some of that anxiousness is excitement. She doesn’t want to recognise that, but she does.)

\--

When there’s been a pencil in her brain and everything is awful and she’s so _bored_ , there’s a lot of time to think.

Rachel ends up concluding she’s bisexual. That her attraction to men and women is different, and _surely_ she must like one more but she doesn’t know which.

She doesn’t tell anyone. She doesn’t want this in her file.

\--

In the end, there’s no woman or man in particular that makes her realise. It’s just Rachel finally allowing herself to put all the pieces together and think _I am a lesbian._

As soon as the words are echoing around her skull it’s like a weight’s been lifted off her chest. She’s not ready to tell anyone, or to even believe it fully, but there’s something satisfying about it. About knowing there’s a _reason_ imagining a romantic relationship with a man has never quite felt right.

Also, she’s sorting of looking forward to telling men who leer at her and watching them splutter.

Of course, she won’t tell Ferdinand. He can go on thinking she’s attached, or not: it’s as long as _he_ is that’s important.

She’s overtaken her mother and pushed aside Sarah and she has everything she wants. It’s like when the knife went into Susan she was cutting herself free of everything that’s been holding her back, letting her anger and pain and _love_ boil into one move that will loosen her restraints forever.

All Rachel really _needs_ is herself, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to begin exploring this side of herself that she’s repressed for so long? Surely, now that everything’s come to the surface and she’s free, she can allow this? To be herself, finally?

\--

Rachel uploads her profile to Sapphire. She has three responses within a day.

**Author's Note:**

> im v nervous abt posting this so any comments would be lovely <3


End file.
